Red Stars will follow you around like a pack of puppies and are excellent layers. Cochins are the sweetest hens that are good mothers and layers. Just not so good in hot/wet/muddy climates due to their feathered hocks and feet. Bardies can be bitches to each other, Welsummers and Wyandotte's too. Orpingtons are a nice dual purpose bird. Americanas lay pretty green eggs for your ham but they tend to be a smaller bird with smaller eggs.
When possible, a 'good' roo' is invaluable for keeping the girls from hair pulling disputes and vigilance against daytime raptors and 'yotes if free ranging your birds. Need at least 8 hens/roo' or he'll be hard on them. Takes a year or so to really settle one in but serial rapists and azzholes become soup rather quickly. We handle our roo' every day and established our dominance over him early on so we've never had one be aggressive to us but have watched one open a big can of whoop-ass on a hawk that nailed one of 'his' girls.
Neighborhood mutts will wipe you out if you don't provide protection.. or shoot the dogs after fair warning.
You'll need about a foot of roost bar/bird. Place the roost bars higher than, and away from, the nesting baskets or they'll roost above/on/in them and make a mess. Stagger bars at least 18" horizontally apart for more than one roost bar. If left to range, they'll generally clock around their coop for no more than 100 paces. If you don't let them range, make sure you can rotate their pen fencing in quadrants around the coop or they'll turn what you provide into a lunar landscape in short order. Premier1 has some excellent poultry fencing options and energizers that will bite hard. 1 Joule will cover most needs with a serious jolt. Ours is run off a 12V car battery with a solar panel charger so it goes anywhere on the acreage. Pretty funny alarm when a 'yote's wet nose contacts same at 3am near your bedroom windows....
Made an 8x8x2' high feed tractor with 1" PVC pipe and Circo fittings covered with chicken wire and profiled PVC siding/roofing. Slip-T fittings for the doors to provide easy access to place feed trays and is easily moved around. Also gives them a secure place to shelter on rainy days. Just stake it down so it doesn't become a tumbleweed.
After a number of trials and errors, we've long used Modesto Mills Organic Corn & Soy Free Layer pellets so the birds don't cherry pick the ration. They get just enough for breakfast and some for dinner, letting them range for their chow all day in between. A lot of commercial feed uses rape seed (canola) oil and GMO corn/soy among other crap you'll need a chemistry PhD to savvy so we don't want it in our eggs or our customer's either.
If one keeps the initial infrastructure costs down, they will generally pay for themselves in a reasonable time and provide lots of free entertainment on the Chicken Channel....
